"Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?"
-Mark 4:41b
Mark 4:35-41 is the famous bible story of Jesus calming the storm. As Jesus and His disciples are crossing some body of water (it's called the sea in the NASB), a fierce storm erupts. Jesus doesn't seemed to bothered at all, because He is sleeping on the boat, most likely exhausted from all His preaching and healing. The disciples are frantic, and they woke Jesus up and said "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing"? Jesus then rebukes the storm, and the wind and waves were stilled.
There are many things that I see in this passage. Even though Jesus rebukes the disciples for having no faith, they still understood one thing; Jesus could do something about the storm. The disciples witnessed Jesus' power and authority through His miracles and preaching. It seems like the disciples knew Jesus could calm the storm, but they don't know if He will, based on their question. There is a lesson in here; when times are tough, we can turn to Jesus and He can and will do something.
The thing I want to focus on in this post is Jesus' words. His words are not ordinary, but have great power and authority. What determines if words have power or not? The person who says the words is generally the biggest factor. If I say to someone, "be quiet", they will probably just think I am rude. If a parent says to a child "be quiet", the child usually will listen because he or she knows that the parent has the power to do something if he or she disobeys. The child understands that the parent has power and authority.
While people with authority certainly get things to happen with their words, their words alone have no power. If a police officer tells someone to put their hands up, that person still has a choice of whether to do it or not, because the words alone have no power. The person will only oblige if they understand that a police officer has been given power and authority.
In Matthew 28:18 Jesus says "All authority has been given Me in heaven and on earth". Jesus has all authority on earth, therefore His words have ultimate power. Other than people however, I believe Jesus' words do carry power in themselves. When Jesus gives a command, His words are immediately carried out. When God spoke in Genesis 3 saying "Let there be light", there was light. When Jesus is on the boat and says "Quiet! Be still!", the wind and the waves immediately obeyed.
Here we learn that Jesus' words have power, but how is that practical? We have to do our best to obey His words. But wait, didn't I just say His words have ultimate power and authority? Doesn't that mean if He says something to us we automatically do it? Theoretically yes, but Jesus gave us something called choice (which I blogged about earlier). We can choose whether to obey Him or not to. If we do choose to obey Him, great things can happen in our lives. I don't want to make this post ridiculously long, so I can't share what happens if we obey Him now. When Jesus tells the wind to be still, when it "obeys", it saves the lives of Jesus and the disciples and also shows them Jesus' great power. How do we obey? The easiest way to know how to obey Jesus' commands is to follow His example. Before He calms the waves, He was sleeping. He was still. He tells the waves to be still, or follow my example. We also have to follow the example of Christ.
-Smart
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